If you’re new to deploying and hosting websites and web apps, New to hosting gives a brief introduction to key concepts.

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Overview

Bolt doesn’t have built-in hosting for your projects. Instead, it connects to Netlify to provide one-click deployments and hosting.

Netlify provides:

  • Hosting
  • Automated deployment
  • Domain registration
  • Monitoring tools

Explore Netlify’s website and documentation for full details of Netlify’s features.

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Limitations

If you plan to use Netlify, you need to understand more about the platform, and the type of software it’s designed to host. Netlify can’t host your database, or a traditional backend.

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Connect Netlify and deploy your project

You can connect your Bolt account to Netlify for quick deployments using Bolt’s built-in Netlify integration.

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Prerequisites

You need a Netlify account.

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Connect Bolt to Netlify

  1. On the Bolt homepage, hover over the left-hand side of the page to open the menu.
  2. Go to Settings > Applications.
  3. Next to Netlify, click Connect.
  4. Log in with your Netlify credentials. Follow the steps to authorize Bolt.

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Deploy your project

In your Bolt project, click Deploy.

To redeploy your project after making changes, click Deploy again.

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Buy or connect a domain

When you first deploy a project with Netlify, it autogenerates a URL for the project. This is a placeholder, and usually something meaningless. If you want users to access the project through your own domain, you need to buy a domain and point it to your Netlify site. The simplest way to do this is to purchase the domain from Netlify.

For all users:

You can follow Netlify’s docs to Register and buy a domain.

For users participating in the June 2025 hackathon on the Pro tier:

After you connect your Netlify account to Bolt, and deploy your project to Netlify, it shows a Set up domain button in the chat.

  1. Click Set up domain. Bolt starts the setup process.
  2. Choose whether to purchase a new domain, or connect a domain you already own:
    • Buying a new domain: this takes you through the process of buying a new domain with Ionos (Ionos will be your domain registrar), configures it with Netlify DNS, and connects it to your Netlify project.
    • Configuring an existing domain: if your domain is registered with a supported provider, this process changes the DNS settings of the domain to use Netlify’s DNS and connects it to your project.
  3. After completing your setup, allow some time for changes to take effect. Once the domain is set up, the Bolt chat will tell you that your project is deployed to your domain the next time you deploy.

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Disconnect Netlify

  1. On the Bolt homepage, hover over the left-hand side of the page to open the menu.
  2. Go to Settings > Applications.
  3. Next to Netlify, click Disconnect.
  4. In Netlify, remove Bolt from your authorized applications:
    1. Click your profile > User settings > OAuth.
    2. Under Authorized applications, click the menu for the Bolt entry.
    3. Click Revoke access.

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Manual deployment

You can deploy your project to Netlify without connecting your Bolt account.

  1. Run the project build command (usually npm run build).
  2. Click Download to download the project.
  3. Follow Netlify’s Manual deploy instructions.

Netlify provide a video tutorial:

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New to hosting

You don’t have to understand deployment and hosting to start building with Bolt, but once you get to the point of deploying your application, it helps to have some knowledge of the concepts and terminology.

If you’re completely new to deploying and hosting websites and web apps, here’s a brief introduction to key concepts. Note that this description is a simplified version of a complex topic. It assumes you’re building a fairly standard site.

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Users, browsers, and servers

When you build a website or application, you need a way to get it to users. For any website or web app, this means hosting the site on a server. The interaction with the site goes like this:

  1. A user goes to your website in their browser.
  2. The browser asks the server for the site.
  3. The server sends the website pages to the browser.
  4. The browser displays the site.

Depending on how complicated your site is, there may be multiple messages between the browser and server as the user interacts with the site.

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Key terms

  • CI/CD: continuous integration and continuous delivery. This is a devops practice, involving automating the processes to building, testing, and deploying code. GitLab provides a good introductory guide: CI/CD explained.
  • Deployment: the process of getting your code onto your server.
  • Devops: development operations.

    the integration and automation of the software development and information technology operations (from Wikipedia)

  • Hosting: storing your project on a server and making it available to users.
  • Interaction: anything the user does. This includes entering a URL to go to a site, as well as things like clicking buttons or submitting forms.
  • Request: the browser sends a message to the server.
  • Response: the server replies to the browser.
  • Web apps: interactive software applications that run in a browser. For example, Bolt itself is a web app.